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After Monday’s gripe-fest about how I wasn’t making sufficient progress on NHI, I immediately summoned my inexhaustible reserves of discipline and focus and…

HAHAHAHAHAHA

No, actually, I instead wrote half of a rough draft for a short story unrelated to NHI except that it takes place in the same city. But that’s OK. It gave me time to adjust to switching back to the original protagonist, and yesterday I completed a one-page plot synopsis. This is a bare-bones list of obstacles that get in Max’s way (full name of protagonist, in case you’re curious: Maxwell Truman) and the actions he takes to deal with them. No description, no interpretation, no contemplation, just road blocks and action.

This morning, I started to expand that one page into three pages. I made good progress, though it wasn’t easy. I find it amusing that when I wrote the various synopses for SHE, after the novel was originally written, that I found it excruciatingly difficult to keep distilling the plot into shorter and shorter forms. I figured it would be much easier to go in the opposite direction. It’s just as hard, but in a different way. Nevertheless, I’m pleased with what I’m accomplishing.